There is so much that has been written about clothing and the layering system for outdoors adventures by many great outdoor adventurers. In any case, clothing and layering outdoors is an extremely subjective and personal topic, so I figured I can add my preferences and opinions to the abundance of articles on the subject. I […]

It has been a while since I have had a chance to sit and write: days have been elbow deep in sick kids, hysterical Portland snow and lots of work pushing my business, Cnoc Outdoors, to the next step. Because of all this, I also failed to even go hiking, but I still have a […]

I’m not a fan of doing end of year reviews or new year’s resolutions, but I am a big fan of planning, especially when it comes to upcoming trips. As a father to two kids under 3, a business owner (well, a start up) and a loving husband, finding time for going outdoors, especially overnights, […]

Most hikers (and, well, most of the other regular humans we know) suffer from some sort of knee problems: either after 10 km of hiking, after 30 miles or just when going downhill with a heavy pack. I am no different – I used to always get knee pain when hiking and I couldn’t even […]

Back to the footwear conundrum I have been dealing with for the last… forever, I have tried my luck again with a pair of Inov8’s: the Race Ultra 290. I know I said I would be avoiding Inov8 shoes after my Cape Wrath Trail experience with the Trailroc 235 in 2015, but I had a […]

I recently relocated from London, UK, to Portland (Oregon), USA, and had no doubt that my hiking life was not over, but actually started a new chapter. After hiking for so many years, hiking the the USA shouldn’t be that hard, right? Well, after 5.5 years in the UK, I am by now a fully […]

You may already be ready for an argument about this: “but I am warmer with my base layer” you will probably angrily reply to the screen (though you can comment it at the bottom too…), but wait a second – I have a point here. Base layers will keep you warmer than being naked, or […]

I need a new …. (fill in the blank) and want it to be light, comfortable, functional, cheap and make me look very cool – which outdoors brand is best to get it from? I have this inner debate roughly 3-4 times day (I am a gear head) and in recent years, finding a good answer […]

Water containers are such a trivial item but there many opinions about it, mainly since there are always the ultimate cheap and light options: empty soda bottles. I’m not against soda bottles (or any disposable bottle) in any way, but I hate the disposable aspect of them. For years I have been a Nalgene user: […]

If you are reading this, there is a good chance you have some connection to the outdoors – you may even call yourself an outdoors enthusiast – but are you really? Being outdoors is hard: you have the weather, the physical challenge, sleeping outside is usually a pain, you are always hungry and tired, your […]

Buying new gear is great – it is exciting, there is an underlying promise of better adventures and it often becomes an obsession; but with the new movement that encourages repairing old gear, the question becomes: when should you retire old gear? In the last few years (and some might say decades), it increasingly feels […]

Over the course of a month and a half in Israel, I had a chance to remember what it means to go hiking in hot weather: the constant sweat, the chase after water from the fear of dehydration, remembering to cover my self (or at least use sun screen) and the loss of appetite. All […]

The last few months have been a real challenge in the Outdoors Father household as we relocated from London, UK to Portland, Oregon (USA), travelling in the UK and Israel along the way. During this time I took a long break and wrote most recently about hiking in Israel and in hot weather (last in […]

Picking a day pack is a very sensitive issue for hikers, almost as much as footwear and big trip backpacks – they are very personal and can be very controversial. I have experimented with more than my share of day packs, trying to find the combination of the features and volume (22-27 litres) I want […]

Last time I wrote about my plans to walk the Yam le Yam trail in northern Israel, despite it being the peak of summer, and how much I love this trail. The Yam le Yam is a truly Israeli classic and features some of the greatest that Israel has to offer in terms of flora, geology […]